Civil police in São Paulo arrested on Sunday (13) Ronaldo Vivacqua, identified by investigators as a hidden partner in one of the companies behind the construction of a building that collapsed onto a house in the Penha district, in the east of the city, early on Saturday (12). According to G1, a court ordered the temporary pretrial arrest of three suspects linked to the project. Ronaldo was taken to the 24th police station, in the Ponte Rasa area, where he is due to give a statement.
Rescue teams also recovered the body of a 7-year-old girl on Sunday, the last victim who had been missing, bringing the death toll to six. The other two warrants target Cristiano Vivacqua, Ronaldo's son, described by police as the author of the project and the engineer responsible for the work, and Isis Brandão, who formally appears as the owner of the company; police consider the two fugitives. Folha de S.Paulo reported that the crimes the suspects may face have not been confirmed. None has been convicted: the arrests are temporary and all three are treated as suspects.
Timeline
The building under construction, 11 floors according to Folha (CNN Brasil says 12), collapsed at around 2 a.m. on Saturday on Rua Tequici. The rubble hit a neighboring house that sheltered nine Bolivian people and doubled as the sewing workshop where the family worked. Eight were in the house when it was hit; two were rescued alive. The dead are three women, one of them pregnant, two men and the 7-year-old girl. According to Folha, the victims were Bolivian and had lived in Brazil for nine years. With the girl's body recovered, the fire department ended the emergency search, and the city government took over removal of the rubble.
The site had a history of irregularities before the collapse. According to CNN Brasil, the construction company had a permit denied by the city in 2019, and in 2021 a lawsuit demanded the demolition of an illegal structure on the lot; inspections by the Penha sub-city hall shut down the work and imposed fines, one of them R$ 119,000. Police say the permit for the new building was conditional on demolishing the previous structure, of five or six floors, and that the condition was not met. A February 2024 inspection recorded that the demolition had been carried out, and the lawsuit was closed. After the collapse, the city opened an inquiry in its comptroller general's office; preliminary findings indicate the demolition never happened, and the inspector who signed the report was suspended for 30 days. Governor Tarcísio de Freitas said the site was under embargo and that the execution did not match what had been authorized. The civil defense agency said it is not possible to confirm a link to the heavy rain that hit the city the same night.
What police and the defense say
Police said the arrests were requested because the suspects had not come forward to the authorities since the investigation began. Antônio José Pereira, the police chief for the Itaquera region, said officers tried to locate the company owner and the engineer right after the collapse, without success. Teams visited company addresses listed in the São Paulo state business registry (Jucesp) and found, in the assessment of police delegate Safira Borges Moreira Parente, signs of "an attempt to hide" the suspects. "We discovered that he is in fact a hidden partner," she said of Ronaldo, who does not appear formally in company documents. Police said Ronaldo denied, in a preliminary hearing, any involvement with the construction company.
"We started to investigate the possibility that it was not entirely an unforeseeable event, but something the responsible parties could have known about, the instability of that building," said delegate Safira, according to G1.
Neighbors told police that the house had cracks before the collapse, and a man whose relatives lived there said he had tried, without success, to contact the person who managed the rental to report the problem. The cause of the collapse has not been determined and depends, among other evidence, on an engineering report by the forensic police.
The defense disputes the police account. The lawyer for the companies said Ronaldo held no management role and was not a hidden partner: he was only accompanying his son, the engineer responsible for the work. The lawyer called the arrests "premature" and said he will ask a court to revoke Ronaldo's detention. In an earlier statement, the builder, New Home Construtora, said "there are no elements that allow the conclusion that the cause of the incident resulted exclusively from the conduct of the construction company," and, according to G1, it opened an internal inquiry. The company's lawyer told Folha it would not comment for now.
Next steps: Ronaldo Vivacqua gives his statement at the 24th police station, and the defense is expected to request the revocation of his temporary arrest. The warrants for Cristiano Vivacqua and Isis Brandão remain to be served. The investigation will define the role of each suspect, and a conclusion on the causes awaits the engineering report, for which no deadline has been announced.